Gratitude For My Own Trials

You know what they say is the best medicine when you find yourself overwhelmed with your own troubles?  Looking beyond yourself and at the lives going on around you.  Somehow you can always look at someone else trials and think "Man, am I glad that I'm not having to deal with, or live through that!"  It doesn't necessarily make your trials easier, but they are yours and you can handle them. 

All these scripture verses and poems are coming to mind.  "The Lord won't give you more than you can bear."  "All these things will be for your good."  "I never said it would be easy, only worth it."  "Those times you only see one set of footprints.......that is when I carried you."

Do you every feel like you just want to curl up in a ball and be carried for awhile?  Then look around you.  Carefully observe the lives of your friends or family.  There is someone who you can carry for a bit.  There is someone who is living through their own personal trial...one that you would not want any part of........there is someone who you can help carry their load.  Walk a mile in their shoes.  Help serve them in some way.  You can be their "Samwise Gamgee."  You can't carry their burden, but you can carry them. 

And when you do this, when you stop focusing on yourself, and your trials, an amazing thing happens.  You find that you have been carried too.  Do your problems magically disappear?  No, but they become easier to bear.  Your burden will seem lighter.  And that is the miracle! THAT is the blessing.  That is when we truly learn that "when ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God." (Mosiah 2:17)